The Machine is not Enough:
three debates on the relationship between human and technology
The Machine is not Enough: three debates on the human-technology relationship
Technology, it is said, is at the service of human beings. But today we find ourselves immersed in a reality that questions us and asks us to stop and think.
Digital tools – smartphones, computers – appear to be now inevitable prostheses of our bodies and minds. We live in symbiosis with digital machines.
Cameras survey every place. Digital platforms are necessary support for every activity, in work and leisure. Notifications reach us at every moment, artificial intelligences (AI) offer support and guidance, chatbots answer every question, digital twins take the place of physical, material things. Cameras monitor every location. In remote locations, Cloud services hold endless masses of data, and increasingly high-performance AIs are being trained.
Subtle, insistent urges invite us to embrace a digital lifestyle without much thought. But this is precisely why collective reflection appears necessary.
There is a need to learn about technologies, even in their lesser-known facets. But above all, we need to cultivate a critical and responsible attitude so that our symbiosis with digital machines is not passive and uninformed.
The way we are citizens, parents, young people, workers, members of the ruling class is being redrawn on the digital stage. It is now up to us to participate in this design.
Fondazione Spazio Vitale aims to be a meeting place for reasoning, experimenting, and studying together about all this, face to face, in presence. Therefore, on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Theo Triantafyllidis: Sisyphean Cycles (Oct. 13 to Nov. 11, 2023), Fondazione Spazio Vitale opens its conference space to three meetings. The cycle, under the collective title La macchina non basta (The machine is not enough), will see Francesco Varanini and Domenico Quaranta publicly confront professionals active in different disciplinary territories, from art to computer engineering to psychotherapy, but sharing a critical reflection on the relationship between human and digital technologies. The full schedule of meetings follows:
Thursday, October 12th, 2023, 5-7 p.m.
Federica Patti in conversation with Domenico Quaranta
Friday, October 13, 2023, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Transgenerational Clinical Interview. Dialogue between a family psychotherapist and Alan Turing. Francesca Turco in conversation with Francesco Varanini
Saturday, October 14, 2023, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
From the Symbiont to the Cybork. Federico Cabitza in conversation with Francesco Varanini.
Federica Patti is an art historian, lecturer and independent curator. Her research focuses around transmedia practices, with particular interest in digital performance, themes of the posthuman and the dynamics of the Metaverse. She collaborates regularly with CUBO – Centro Unipol Bologna and with Romaeuropa Festival for the Digitalive section. lunarium.substack.com
Federico Cabitza is associate professor of Human-Machine Interaction at the University of Milan-Bicocca, where he is head of the laboratory of “Uncertainty Models for Decisions and Interactions” and director of the local node of the CINI national laboratory “Computing and Society.” Also affiliated with IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi, he collaborates with several hospitals in Italy and abroad on the development of Machine Learning-based decision support.
Francesco Varanini, president of Assoetica, former professor of Humanistic Informatics at the Universities of Pisa and Udine, is the author of Macchine per pensare. L’informatica come prosecuzione della filosofia con altri mezzi [Machines for Thinking: Computing as a continuation of philosophy by other means] (2016) and Macchine per pensare. L’informatica come prosecuzione della filosofia con altri mezzi [The Five Bronze Laws of the Digital Age. And why it pays to transgress them] (2020). francescovaranini.it, diecichilidiperle.blogspot.com
Francesca Turco, psychologist; psychotherapist. Expert in Family and Couple Relational Dynamics with systemic and transgenerational approach.She has been practicing her profession since 2009.
Domenico Quaranta is an art critic, curator and lecturer at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan. He is the author of several books and publications, including Beyond New Media Art (2013) and Surfing with Satoshi. Art, Blockchain and NFTs (2022). domenicoquaranta.com.
